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Epstein Files

Les Wexner Told Congress He Was Stupid. Epstein’s Own Words Say They Had Rules.

By Updated

Welcome to The RATC Project - a new series where I connect the dots using the Epstein Files. I’ll list the public evidence files I used - but some of the notations are from my own notes.

“I was naive, foolish, and gullible to put any trust in Jeffrey Epstein. He was a con man.”

That’s Leslie Wexner, 88 years old, the richest man in Ohio, sitting in his New Albany estate on February 18th while five Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee ask him how a retail genius who built Victoria’s Secret into a global empire got played by a college dropout for two decades. Zero Republican members showed up. Just staffers. Wexner sat for five hours and deployed the oldest defense in white-collar America: I’m not a criminal, I’m an idiot.

He’d rather you think he’s stupid than complicit. That’s the play.

But the Epstein archive tells a different story. Not a story about a billionaire who got conned. A story about two men who had rules.

In July 1991, Wexner signed over complete power of attorney to Jeffrey Epstein (I-WEX-001; the recorded power of attorney). Not a consulting gig. Not an advisory role. Full authority to sign tax returns, borrow money, hire staff, buy and sell properties, and execute any legally binding transaction as if he were Wexner himself. A durable power of attorney, recorded with the county in Ohio, that stayed in force even if Wexner himself became disabled. The Victoria’s Secret billionaire handed the keys to his entire fortune to a former Dalton math teacher who’d spent five years at Bear Stearns before going out on his own as a financial adviser to rich clients (EFTA01365971). Wexner told the committee Epstein initially refused to take him on - played hard to get, offered free advice, made himself indispensable. Classic con man behavior, Wexner said.

Or classic intelligence recruitment tradecraft. Because Epstein wasn’t just some math teacher who got lucky. He carried an Austrian passport issued under an alias. Former U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta - the man who gave Epstein the sweetheart plea deal in 2008 - reportedly told Trump’s transition team, “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.” That account came from an anonymous former White House official, and Acosta has denied it under oath. And according to sources cited by Columbus journalist Bob Fitrakis, Epstein played a pivotal role in moving Southern Air Transport - an airline the CIA secretly owned until 1973, which later flew weapons in the Iran-Contra scandal - to Columbus, Ohio, in the mid-1990s, where much of its cargo was for Wexner’s The Limited. So either Wexner handed the keys to his kingdom to a random college dropout and never asked a single question, or he knew exactly who he was dealing with.

Then came the house. Wexner bought the Herbert N. Straus mansion - the largest private residence in Manhattan - for $13.2 million in 1989. Spent at least that much renovating it. Picassos. Russian antiques. Heated sidewalks. Then, around 1996, the title went to Epstein for zero dollars - though Wexner now says Epstein bought it for what he was told was the appraised value. The Guaranty and Assignment Agreement between NES LLC and Leslie H. Wexner documents the mechanism - Epstein guaranteeing a $10 million promissory note for a property worth multiples of that (EFTA00313059). That’s the address where the FBI later found hundreds of photos of nude women and girls, some of them on CDs in boxes catalogued with police-style evidence tape, and a safe full of hard drives, diamonds and passports (RATC Essays, “The House That Wexner Built”). But here’s the detail that kills the “clean break” narrative: the title wasn’t formally transferred to Epstein until 2011 (I-WEX-003; E-WEX-002). Four years after Wexner claims he walked away.

The money trail is worse. Epstein managed Wexner’s entire wealth portfolio - stocks, real estate, the works (EFTA01365971). During the deposition, staffers told Wexner that Epstein was trustee of a trust receiving stock from The Limited, selling $1.3 billion on the New York Stock Exchange and skimming personal proceeds. According to 10TV, Wexner said he was “effing surprised.” When they told him $20 million from two of his own charitable foundations went to one of Epstein’s charities, he said he was “effing shocked. I’m appalled. I never heard that.” AG Pam Bondi told the House Judiciary Committee that Wexner’s name appears more than 4,000 times in the Epstein files. But sure - he never noticed anything.

Wexner claims he finally noticed something was off in 2007. His own letter to the Wexner Foundation, in 2019, accused Epstein of having “misappropriated vast sums of money” from him and his family, with about $46 million in securities recovered (EFTA00172284). The New York Times reported that Wexner had given Epstein “wide powers” over his finances (EFTA00172284). Wide powers.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. The archive has something the committee either didn’t see or didn’t ask about.

In a 2006 email, Epstein wrote: “I believe that this information belongs to you, and under ‘gang stuff’ rules I cannot simply be the repository of peoples hushed calls” (2006 email, [email protected]). Gang stuff rules. They had rules. Established protocols for handling sensitive shared information. In Epstein’s telling, the “naive billionaire” and his financial advisor had rules for who could know what, and when, and how it got passed around. You don’t need “gang stuff rules” with your accountant. You need them with someone you’re in the shit with.

And then there are Epstein’s draft notes from the summer of 2015. Multiple versions, all sent from [email protected] to himself, subject lines starting “wexner, darren, house. martin…” (EFTA00645002, EFTA00653278, EFTA00631928, EFTA00698810, EFTA00716143). The content reads like a leverage inventory: “best friend did not ask, speak, never ever, gang stuff… 34 girls wexner, irs… bankrupt, bankrupt sales tax, ohio, cigars… shooting.”

Thirty-four girls. A number Epstein attached to Wexner’s name in his own private notes that nobody was supposed to see. These aren’t verified allegations - they’re Epstein’s personal talking points, the kind of list you make when you’re tracking what you know about somebody for reasons that have nothing to do with friendship.

The “shooting” is its own rabbit hole. In 1985, Arthur Shapiro - a partner at a Columbus law firm who was assigned to The Limited’s account - was shot dead in Columbus one day before he was set to testify before a grand jury about an illegal tax scheme he’d been part of (The Daily Beast). The prime suspect was his business partner in those tax schemes, Berry Kessler, who had no connection to Wexner. Still unsolved forty years later. A 1991 Columbus police report on the killing went looking for mob ties in Wexner’s businesses and found some tenuous ones - and a police chief called its theories highly speculative and not based on hard evidence (Wikipedia). One year after Shapiro died, Robert Meister introduced Wexner to Jeffrey Epstein (N-WEX-001). You can call that coincidence.

About that “clean break.” Wexner told the committee he “completely and irrevocably cut ties with Epstein nearly twenty years ago.” But there’s a June 2008 email exchange between them - four days before Epstein’s guilty plea - that says otherwise (E-WEX-005). And the mansion title? 2011. You don’t sever ties with somebody and keep your $77 million house in limbo for four more years.

Meanwhile, Wexner’s own Victoria’s Secret executives were reporting by the mid-1990s that Epstein was posing as a company recruiter, approaching young women and telling them he could get them modeling jobs (I-WEX-004). His own people were flagging this. For over a decade before the “break.”

And then there’s what happened on his property. Maria Farmer says Epstein and Maxwell sexually assaulted her on Wexner-owned land in Ohio in 1996, and that Wexner’s private security held her for twelve hours when she tried to leave (I-WEX-005; RATC Essays, “Trapped on Wexner’s Land”). She says she reported it to the FBI that year. And that the FBI didn’t come to her door until 2006 - a decade later.

Wexner told the committee he never witnessed anything. He drew Epstein a pair of breasts for his 50th birthday in 2003 and signed it “your friend Leslie” (I-WEX-008). According to WOSU, when staffers pointed out he’d spent the entire deposition insisting Epstein wasn’t his friend, Wexner explained the drawing was “a joke” because Epstein was “a bachelor.” The committee showed him a photo of himself with his arm around Epstein, champagne glass in hand, at a boat launch in Bremen. He said he didn’t recall who invited Epstein.

He didn’t recall a lot of things. Rep. Stephen Lynch told reporters Wexner is “lucid” and “certainly capable of answering these questions” - he’s “just not telling the truth.” Rep. Robert Garcia was blunter: “There would be no Epstein island, there’d be no Epstein plane, there would be no money to traffic women and girls. Mr. Epstein would not be the wealthy man he was, without the support of Les Wexner.”

Ohio is waking up. As of this week, hundreds of Ohio State students have walked out of classes demanding Wexner’s name come off the medical center, the football complex, and the arts center. According to the Ohio Capital Journal, over 400 formal name-removal requests have been submitted. The Ohio Nurses Association picketed outside the brand new 26-story Wexner Medical Center tower on its first day open to patients. Politicians on both sides of the aisle are returning or giving away his campaign donations. The chair of Ohio State’s Board of Trustees is an attorney whose law firm represents Wexner - and people are calling for his removal too.

Two hundred million dollars buys you a lot of building names. It doesn’t buy you a lot of time once the archive opens up.

The generous interpretation is that a brilliant retail executive who turned a single store in Columbus into a multi-billion dollar empire was so completely bamboozled by a charming con artist that he handed over his fortune, his mansion, his Boeing 727, and the keys to his property where crimes occurred - all without ever noticing anything was off. For twenty years. While his own executives flagged the behavior. While Maria Farmer says she was assaulted on his land and held there by his security. While Epstein emailed about their “gang stuff rules.” While Epstein privately cataloged “34 girls wexner” in his notes.

The Epstein Files’ interpretation is different. They say they had rules.

Sources

News Sources

Epstein Archive (EFTA Documents)

  • EFTA00313059 (19 pages) - Guaranty and Assignment Agreement, 9 E 71st St property transfer between NES LLC and Leslie H. Wexner, includes $10M promissory note guaranty
  • EFTA00172284 (3 pages) - Wexner Foundation letter accusing Epstein of misappropriating “vast sums,” $46M in securities recovered, confirms “wide powers”
  • EFTA01365971 - Financial management summary documenting Epstein managing Wexner’s wealth including stock investments and real estate
  • EFTA00645002, EFTA00653278, EFTA00631928, EFTA00698810, EFTA00716143 - Epstein draft notes to self (July-Aug 2015), subject “wexner, darren, house. martin…” containing “gang stuff,” “34 girls wexner,” “shooting,” and other leverage fragments
  • 2006 email ([email protected]) - Epstein referencing “gang stuff rules” as established information-handling protocol with Wexner

Correction, September 28th, 2026: This essay first said Arthur Shapiro was Wexner’s primary tax attorney, killed before he could testify about tax evasion tied to Wexner’s companies, and that police memos suggested Shapiro knew of Wexner bribing Ohio officials - Shapiro was a partner at a Columbus firm who was assigned to The Limited’s account, he was due to testify about a tax scheme he’d been part of, the prime suspect had no connection to Wexner, and nothing in the record shows the bribery claim. It also said Epstein called the shooting a talking point, which the record doesn’t show, and that “wide powers” was Wexner’s own phrase - it was the New York Times’s. It said the 1991 power of attorney was set up with JPMorgan and stayed in force if Epstein became disabled or died - it was recorded with the county in Ohio and stayed in force if Wexner became disabled. It said Epstein’s only known job before Wexner was teaching math at Dalton - he’d also spent five years at Bear Stearns and gone out on his own as a financial adviser. And it said the FBI found photos of nude girls and a safe of hard drives wrapped in evidence tape at the townhouse - the photos were of women and girls, the evidence tape was on boxes of CDs, and the safe held hard drives, diamonds and passports.

Update, September 28th, 2026: The headline now says the rules come from Epstein’s own words, and a few lines now say who says so - Maria Farmer on what she says happened on Wexner’s land and what she told the FBI, Columbus journalist Bob Fitrakis’s sources on Epstein and Southern Air Transport, Epstein himself on the “gang stuff” rules, and the anonymous official behind the Acosta story, which Acosta has denied under oath - while others now say the Wexner Foundation letter came in 2019, the executives’ warnings came in the mid-1990s, Wexner says Epstein paid for the house, politicians are returning or giving away his donations, and Epstein’s notes don’t say which shooting he meant, and the Shapiro and power of attorney lines now link to public sources.

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